General Forum

It won't stop until people stop buying. That's the sad thing. 

Same with baseball in Topps High Tech. Wh needs 36 patterns. I get lost as last year's Easter Eggs trying to make sure I have the correct one listed then a trade offer comes in and doubt myself again if I listed the card right 

It's a real issue and just throws the hobby in a spin cycle. One of the prizm sets I added earlier the rookies weren't in the bad set only the parallels and inserts. It makes it even harder to complete the rookie class at that point. 

What has been taking the fun out of it for me is how hard it is to get any cards, much less any chance at collecting inserts. 

I liked the inserts like Topps Gold cards from the 90s where you get 1 in every pack and you can find packs in any store.  Now days if you can even find a pack of trading cards anywhere it's rare so forget trying to collect the inserts when it is already hard enough to collect the standard set.  And if you give in and try to buy cards online you nearly have to take out a second morgate due to the mark up the scalpers have on them.

As a collector and not an investor, I actually miss the junk era days of being able to find cards in every store.  I'd much rather have a set worth $50 that I can actually find all the cards for then having a set worth $100,000k that will be near impossible for me to ever finish.

Collecting used to be about completing one set of cards and not chasing the parallels of which can number literally in the hundreds making a set no longer an actuality (perhaps outside of simply the "base set" ). Throw in the flippers and you have another level of chagrin for many who simply collected for the sake of being able to finish the base set , which wasn't a guarantee in those days considering most kids did not have an endless supply of nickels and dimes to be the packages. (showing my age as to the era of collecting when a pack could be bought for less than a pop or bag of chips at your local corner store.) No signs of that returning as several have noted its becoming less of an actual hobby for many.

This is a great point.  I just looked at the Cincinnati Reds that I collect and they have 141,451 listings between Reds, Redlegs, and RedStockings

21,930 of them are from 2019 til now  Thats 15.5% of all the Reds cards produced are in the last 2 1/2 years.or put an easier way to understand 1 out of every 6.5 Cincinnati Reds cards produced have benn in the last 30 months

I bet 90% of that is just from topps and panini send their endless parallel list. 

i miss huge 500 card sets, I love paralells, and it almost dissapoints when i pull an insert

and when i say 500 card sets i dont mean 200 vets and 300 rookies that are only #d to 500 that make it basically impossible to complete

Score and donruss are my 2 favorite set right now just because of there size

The only sets I collect now are the Topps (along with the anniversary inserts) and Bowman baseball (and Bowman only if I can trade for them). I would love to see Topps, Panini, whoever, come out with packs of just base cards. Those would probably be a little more available for set builders and kids who would like to start collecting (because the flippers wouldn't gobble them all up), and they would most likely be a little more affordable as well. Like Thunderfoot said, as a set builder it's almost a disappointment pulling an insert knowing that you'll never collect all of the different variations.

This is one of my biggest pet peeves about how the card companies produce which is why I am a base set collector only. I don't chase inserts or parallels. I'm largely a football set collector and hockey UD. I do like a bit of challenge when collecting and don't want the chase to be over after 1 or 2 purchases/trades. My ideal is sets 400-600 cards. One of the main reasons I am still working on older sets right now. I'm not in a rush to get to modern day sets.